Centorr Vacuum Industries (CVI) recently announced it has shipped its first redesigned flagship Workhorse™ Vacuum furnace to Setra Systems for its U.S. production facility. CVI’s Workhorse furnaces were first introduced in 1967. After selling over 400 Workhorse furnaces for precision brazing, heat treating, annealing, degassing, and sintering, CVI began a complete upgrade to the design of the furnace in late 2013. 

 

Centorr engineers updated the furnace offering with a number of design improvements, including an all-stainless-steel chamber; an upsized diffusion pumping system; an updated computer control system with touchscreen monitor; a streamlined design of all utility connections, resulting in a sleek, more professional appearance; and several hot zone improvements for longer life in difficult process environments.

 

While implementing these changes, CVI’s engineers and manufacturing group were also able to reduce the price for the equipment by 25%. Today’s second-generation Workhorse furnace is available in sizes from 1-12 cu ft, as well as temperatures of 1,000°C, 1,315°C, 1,650°C, and 2,200°C in either low- or high-vacuum configurations. Several options are also available for customizing the unit to add debinding capability, fast cooling, or operation in hydrogen gas. 

 

CVI’s most recent shipment of its Workhorse II GEN II design was to Setra Systems of Boxborough, Mass. Setra designs and manufactures a broad line of sensing products for the industrial market. These include humidity, current, vacuum, and pressure sensing instruments, low-pressure calibrators, and weighing and counting scales for a wide variety of applications in the HVAC/R, semiconductor, testing and measurement, medical, pharmaceutical, barometric, vacuum, and industrial markets. 

 

Working closely with Setra engineers, Centorr incorporated Setra’s line of M730 vacuum pressure transducers into its design for pressure measurement as part of a customized high partial-pressure gas control option. Centorr also included Setra’s newest product offering, the Power Patrol, into its design. This Wi-Fi-enabled power sensor tracks current used by the furnace’s power supply, allowing the customer to track valuable data on power usage in real time from anywhere in the world. Setra’s Power Patrol will be available to the market starting in late 2014, and will be available as an option on all Centorr furnaces.

 

For more information, visit www.centorr.com.